Come Fly With Me

written by Matilde Keith, PHR on April 5, 2013

It’s almost time for the season 6 premiere of my all-time favorite show, Mad Men!  Season 6 airs on AMC on April 7^th at 9/8c.  I’m anxiously anticipating what scandalous and wildly inappropriate things these people will do next at their place of employment!  Gasp!  As an HR Manager, I cringe when I see Don Draper grab the decanter of whiskey from his office mini bar and pour himself a drink.  Meanwhile his underlings are making sexual advances at his latest secretary.  I think to myself, “They really are mad, those men!”

Was that really what things were like back then?  (And I hope none of you are saying, “What’s she talking about, ‘back then?’  We do that at my job all the time!”).  I’m sure you know, that kind of behavior is no longer legally or socially acceptable, but in the 1960s workplace?  Sure, why not?

I often take for granted the rights we enjoy in today’s workplace.  I wonder, though, how did we get here?  Who were the real people in the Mad Men office who said, “Enough?”  There are many examples, but one industry that particularly intrigues me is the airlines.

Queue music: Frank Sinatra sings, Come fly with me, let’s fly, let’s fly aw-ayyy.  Ah, stewardesses. Either you’ve never heard that term, haven’t heard it in a while, or it makes you feel like I just said a dirty word.  The world’s first flight attendants were introduced by United Airlines in the mid-1930s.  Back then the airline had a formal policy that refused to hire married women for their cabin service.  Married women need not apply.  Single women that were hired and later became married would be promptly dismissed; this became an industry-wide standard.  The majority of cabin service was provided by women attendants.  Although some airlines did employ a few male attendants, the stewards were not held to the same marriage bans.

In the 1950s, American Airlines were the first to issue an age restriction on their flight attendants, in addition to their marriage ban.  Once you reached the age of 32 you were automatically asked to retire from passenger service.  The Air Line Stewards and Stewardesses Association (ALSSA), the national flight attendant union, protested this policy.  The union was able to convince the airlines to allow flight attendants hired before the age ceiling was introduced to remain employed under “grandmother rights”.  The union protested the marriage bans and age ceilings from time to time thereafter, but they gained little or no resolutions.

But then came the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Title VII of the Act makes it unlawful for an employer to discriminate against any individual because of their race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.  In a documentary by PBS called Makers: Women Who Make America, it is said that the decision to add gender to Title VII was “a surprise, last minute move.”  The Director of the newly-developed Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) called it “a fluke.”  Nonetheless, flight attendants and their unions believed its existence would give them some leverage in collective bargaining.  In some ways it did; certain airlines raised their age ceilings to 35 (up from 32) and others gave stewardesses a 6-month grace period after marriage before they were fired.

In 1965, stewardesses would be the very first women to file a charge of sex discrimination with the EEOC.  The EEOC later issued general guidelines that made the act of firing married female employees a form of sex discrimination if the policy was not also applied to male employees.  Later, they would issue their first ruling on a sexual discrimination complaint brought by Judith Evenson against Northwest Airlines.  EEOC Commissioner Aileen Hernandez found there was “reasonable cause” to believe Northwest illegally discriminated against Evenson because their “no-marriage” policy was not applied to Northwest’s male flight attendants.

When asked by the Air Transportation Association (ATA) to issue a categorical general finding on age and marriage violations of Title VII, the EEOC began a comprehensive study of airline policies.  They issued their general ruling in 1966, making a range of airline employment practices illegal.  Within days, the airlines secured an injunction charging there was a conflict of interest in the ruling.  Commissioner Aileen Hernandez who had voted in the case was allegedly involved with the newly-formed group, National Organization for Women (NOW).  The airlines were able to persuade a federal judge to enjoin the EEOC from releasing the ruling on the airline policies based on Hernandez’s perceived feminist bias.

The EEOC began another study in 1967.  That same year, Congress passed the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967.  Unfortunately for flight attendants, the act only protected workers between the ages of 40 to 65 from age discrimination.  The flight attendants would have to keep fighting on their own.

Even though in 1968 the EEOC issued individual rulings as well as a general ruling declaring age and marital restrictions on stewardesses’ employment to be illegal sex discrimination under Title VII, most flight attendants were still being defeated in federal courts.  Progress, however, was being made through their labor union contract negotiations.  Just before their all-female flight attendant crew went on strike, American Airlines granted them the right to marry without forfeiting their jobs.  United would follow suit later that year.  This effectively brought an end to the airlines’ “single-women-only” policies.

Perhaps the most historically important case concerning flight attendant employment and sex discrimination was Diaz v. Pan American in 1971.  What made this case different is that it was initiated by a male applicant denied employment by Pan Am.  During trial Pan Am offered several justifications for its policy of hiring only females for passenger service.  The trial judge in Florida ruled in favor of the airline stating the policy met the “BFOQ” standard defined in Title VII.  This clause in the Act allows employers to discriminate as long as sex is “a bona fide occupational qualification reasonably necessary to the normal operation of that particular business or enterprise.”

In 1972 the appellate court reversed the ruling.  The Fifth Circuit appellate court said, to be legal sex discrimination, it has to be necessary to the essential business of an employer.  In Pan Am’s case, they found it was not necessary to the carrier’s basic business of transporting passengers safely, but merely convenient.  Pan Am requested a higher appeal but the U.S. Supreme Court turned it down.

This case set an important precedent and allowed men to enter the flight attendant occupation in greater numbers. Now the terms “stewardess” and “steward” are widely considered ancient and sometimes derogatory.  What was once a company standard is now considered illegal.  It makes me wonder, what are we doing in today’s workplace that 50 years from now will be considered socially unacceptable and possibly illegal?

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As a Human Resources Manager for Landrum Professional Employer Services, Matilde Keith, has over five years of human resources experience in the Pensacola, FL area. Keith specializes in salary surveys, compensation and job classification reviews, among other human resources generalist duties. Prior to her current position, Keith worked as an HR Specialist for Landrum Staffing, managing the staffing needs of one of Landrum Staffing’s largest accounts. Keith is a 1st generation Cuban-American, fluent in both English and Spanish. Born and raised in Key West, FL, Keith calls herself “an original Key West Conch”.